Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to rigging of avatars.
Background
An avatar is a virtual representation of an object, such as a person. The avatar can be a two-dimensional representation or a three-dimensional representation of the object. Avatars that are three-dimensional representations of objects typically include meshes that represent surfaces of the objects. For instance, the meshes may include contours that depict three-dimensional aspects of the objects. A mesh is often generated at the direction of a human designer. Traditionally, the designer manually generates virtual items, such as eyeballs, and manually associates the virtual items with the mesh to generate an avatar.
An avatar may be animated, for example, by manipulating the mesh of the avatar using a virtual device that is referred to as a virtual rig. A virtual rig usually includes a collection of inter-related reference points that correspond to portions of the mesh. The virtual rig changes the relationships between the interconnected reference points to manipulate the mesh. Each manipulation of the mesh corresponds to a respective configuration of the avatar. Configurations of the avatar often are depicted using sequential virtual snapshots that represent respective physical configurations of the corresponding object. For example, configurations of an avatar that represents a video conference participant may illustrate movements (e.g., eye, lip, head, and arm movements) of the participant during the video conference. In accordance with this example, the configurations may be communicated to other participants of the video conference.
Conventional techniques for rigging an avatar involve manually associating reference points of the avatar's virtual rig to vertices of the avatar's mesh and to virtual items that are associated with the mesh. For example, a reference point, such as an eye bone, of a virtual rig may be manually associated with vertices that correspond to a virtual eyeball to enable the virtual rig to maneuver the virtual eyeball and/or a virtual eyelid that corresponds to the virtual eyeball. Manual association of mesh vertices, virtual items, and/or virtual rig reference points may be labor intensive and/or time consuming. Moreover, such manual association requires services of a human designer.